An unemployed office drone leaves the cubicle life behind to study the pastry arts.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Cake Walk

What a difference a day makes! I was feeling fairly frustrated with the cake unit. It felt very rushed, and I didn't feel I had the time I needed to get a grasp on these techniques. However, we were able to catch up yesterday, and right now I'm feeling a lot more confident about my cake making skills.

Well, we made one Hell of a cake yesterday. It's called a Marjolaine, and it's not messing around with anyone. It has a gazillion different components, and it looks like a big candy bar. It's got a ton of flavor, too. The Marjolaine is a layer cake, and each layer is something different. From the bottom to the top, it has chocolate genoise soaked in frangelico, ganache, creme d'or (whipped ganache), dacquoise, hazelnut praline buttercream, dacquoise, whipped cream, dacquoise. Then, the whole thing is coated in more praline buttercream and then generously covered in dark chocolate glaze. INTENSE! Don't ask me for a slice, because I don't think I could recreate this masterpiece at home if I tried. Not to mention it's the kind of thing that dirties every dish and utensil in the kitchen. That being said, it was delicious, and Adam might love it more than he loves me. So, here is the full cake, decorated with crushed praline:

And here is a cross section of cake. Do you see all the individual layers?

The other major item we made was a Charlotte Russe. Charlotte is a name given to any molded dessert, so this one is a Russian charlotte. It's supposed to resemble a Russian fur hat, which...I guess. Anyway, this dessert is made of lady fingers on the sides and bottom, forming a sort of bowl. That was then filled in with peach Bavarian cream and decorated with peaches and whipped cream. I'm giving this one to my super...maybe it will grease the wheels in getting some things taken care of around the apartment. Whatever it takes, I guess!

Well that's about it for yesterday. I'm looking forward to our next class. We're going to unmold and put the finishing touches on our Charlotte Royale (aka, the "brain cake") and also do our fruit miroir. The fruit miroir is a dessert featured on the cover of our textbook. Everyone in class has been drooling over that one since we first saw the book! Can't wait!